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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
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War Diary: Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002
October 17, 2002
Turbulence continues in the core U.S. alliance. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Wednesday that the United States could not attack Iraq without Turkish support and that he was urging Washington to abandon the idea of an attack. However, urging the United States not to attack and telling Washington that it cannot use Turkish territory to carry out the attacks are very different things. Ecevit did the former. Moreover, Ecevit is facing election in a few weeks, and the odds are that he's going to lose.
Image Credit: Stratfor.com.
Nevertheless, his statement is significant because it highlights a fundamental political and strategic problem that the United States has on its northern front: It relies heavily on Turkey. The United States also wants to use indigenous forces to overthrow Saddam Hussein, following the Afghan model. The Kurds represent an obvious indigenous force, but they also want an independent state. Unfortunately for the Kurds, they live not only in Iraq, but also in Iran and Turkey -- and neither Tehran nor Ankara wants in independent Kurdish state created in Iraq because they believe that this would serve as a nucleus for a greater Kurdish state that would claim parts of Turkey and Iran.
If the United States attacks Iraq without Kurdish help, there is still the danger, from the Turkish and Iranian point of view, of the disintegration of Iraq and the de facto creation of a Kurdish entity. If Washington attacks Iraq with Kurdish help, it will be because the United States has promised the Kurds an independent state. Now, U.S. officials might double-cross the Kurds -- there is a history there -- but the Kurds won't play without solid guarantees, and the Turks won't play if there is even a hint. Such guarantees have been made. That's why Washington has kept the Kurds separate from the great anti-Hussein front it is creating.
This is giving U.S. leaders a headache in northern Iraq. Even if the United States doesn't work with the Kurds, it will have to manage them somehow. Ecevit reminded Washington that the minimum Turkish price for cooperation is zero encouragement of Kurdish independence, just in case the Bush administration forgot. He also was sincerely telling the United States that Turkey is far from enthusiastic about this war. The most important element of the war, the future of the Kurds, is too unpredictable in this environment for Ankara's taste. Turkey will play, but reluctantly.
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(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
War Diary: Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002 . . .